The schedule of summer events in NYC is like my group of friends on a bender: it just don’t stop!

August Activities Around NYC:

Monday, July 28th-Friday, August 1st
Restaurant Week
Enjoy prix fixe lunches at selected restaurants for $24.07 and prix fixe dinners for $35. Please your pals by scoring a great reservation at one of the more than 200 participating restaurants, but make sure they know to bring cash. Order the wine and tip the wait staff generously.
www.nycvisit.com/restaurantwee

July 22nd-August 17th
Shakespeare in the Park
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical featuring Jonathan Groff (Spring Awakening)
Get up early and stand in line at Central Park, 81st Street entrance near the Delacorte Theater. Good luck!
www.publictheater.org/content/view/126/219

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This week I’m focusing on events that only take place in this fabulous town. Enjoy!

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This week’s post is jam-packed with events taking place throughout July, from Brighton Beach up to Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Click after the jump to find enough activities to keep you busy every day for the rest of the month!

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What is the most successful movie studio of all-time? Is it Warner Brothers with its classic dramas dating back to Casablanca. 20th Century Fox with its string of blockbuster summer spectaculars? Paramount and its legion of big-time studio stars? MGM and its classic archive of musicals? Nope. Not them or Universal or RKO or Miramax or even Disney. The one studio that has a better track record than all of them combined? It’s Pixar, the little animation studio that can’t miss.

This independent company essentially invented 3D computer animation and since turning that art into a full-fledged entertainment studio, has put together the greatest run in Hollywood history. They’ve created 8 feature-length animated films since 1995 and when it comes to both box office and critical success, they nailed them all. Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monster’s Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, and Ratatouille. They are a perfect 8-for-8.

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What are you doing looking for movie suggestions, when it’s so beautiful outside! It’s now officially summer, according to the scientists and everything, so the last thing you should be doing this weekend is hanging out in dark, artificial climate for two hours at a time. Plus, grilled hot dogs make way better snacks than stale popcorn and Milk Duds.

But, you may be saying to yourself, “I have to watch movies all the time and how can I see them when I’m outside?” Well, you’re in luck because few cities give you more and better options for watching films al fresco than New York. How jam packed is The Big Apple’s outdoor movie scene? It’s so big, you actually have to go to New Jersey to see some of them. Imagine that! Get the low down on the city’s best summer screenings below.

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It’s a pretty spectacular feat for one director to be responsible for one of the best movies of the last 10 years and to have also made, in that same time span, one of the absolute worst movies … maybe ever. M. Night Shyamalan is the lucky man to hold that distinction. It seems like forever ago, but in 1999 he blew away the world with The Sixth Sense, a movie that annoying people everywhere still claim to have known the secret to even though they didn’t. But the secret was not even the point. It was brilliant filmmaking that nearly everyone was impressed by and enjoyed. Even watching it today, it is still moving and powerful.

On the other hand, it was just a few weeks ago when sitting in the theater for another film that a trailer for “The Happening” ran. The crowd sat quietly at attention until the words “from the director of The Sixth Sense” appeared on the screen. Then they broke out into laughter, because the very name of that same director–the one who had wowed them all those years ago–has turned into a punch line.

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Every year around this time, my friends anxiously await an e-mail that I send around once a year. For a number of years, I’ve compiled a list of all the great summer activities that take place in NYC and send it to the masses with hopes that others will join me on urban adventures.

There are many other summer events lists floating around the Internet right now, but mine includes activities that take places in *gasp* other boroughs than Manhattan.

The list is usually the same from year to year, but one notable exception for 2008 is the absence of the Metropolitan Opera concert in Central Park. Instead, the Met will host one performance in Prospect Park on Friday, June 20.

Be sure to bookmark this page, as I’ll add a few more events as I come across them. And check back for the lists of monthly activities for July, August and September later this summer.

Pull up your calendar and mark down these dates. What a way to kick off summer!

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Whew! Let’s take a breather, huh? The first few weeks of the summer season have been a whirlwind, but this week we finally get to slow down a bit and gather ourselves before the next wave of blockbusters washes up on shore. The only major studio release I see on tap for this week is the one where Adam Sandler and Jack Black play a team of undercover zookeepers who specialize in giving haircuts to panda bears. It sure sounds wacky, but I think I’ll pass. Besides Billy Madison is probably on TBS at some point this weekend, so you can just watch that one more time instead.

Or why not use the weekend to catch up on anything you may have missed from the big May releases. (Translation: Go see Iron Man again.) Or if you’re stuck in New York this muggy summer weekend, take the opportunity to visit one of our small indie theaters–Mongol, a Genghis Khan biopic that looks interesting–or take our number one recommendation, a midnight showing of Zardoz at IFC Center. What is Zardoz, you ask? And why should you see it? Well, if you Google Image Search “Sean Connery Zardoz” this is the first result …

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Even more exciting than the presence of an actual spring in NYC this year is the variety of outdoor summer activities that will soon be upon us. I dont know about you, but the release of the summer schedules always renews my love for New York.

Here are a few events that just happen to be located in Midtown, but some are local favorites and all are definitely worth your time.

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I searched high and low this week, scanning all the coming attractions and theater schedules and trailers that are out there hoping to find even one movie that might have some sort of local angle for New Yorkers to enjoy. You know what? There aren’t any! There’s absolutely no movie this week that was shot here, or takes place here, or has any sort of relevance or commentary on any of the five boroughs or the people who live here.

Nope. Not one!

Oh … unless maybe … you want to count one.

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